Early morning in Cape Town and 50mph winds whistle in from the Atlantic. Cyclists, 34,500 of us, advance slowly towards the start line past the civic centre. We move like lemmings, and every few minutes the announcer waves another pack of a hundred or so of us off. When it comes to our turn, the gusts are so fierce we are nearly blown off our bikes.

The race begins, a sea of multicoloured Lycra, but I make it barely a mile before my back wheel seizes up and I am forced to attempt hasty repairs by the side of the road. My team – led by the retired England cricketer Allan Lamb – whizz on without me. After a futile 10 minutes I am reduced to taking the entire back brake off in order to continue. It is, I fear, going to be a long and rather terrifying ride.

The Cape Argus Cycle Tour, the world’s largest individually timed cycle race, is not for the faint-hearted. Every year, some 35,000 to 40,000 cyclists head to the Mother City from all over the world to pedal the 68-mile circular route around the Cape Peninsula, passing over three particularly brutal peaks.

The race has come a long way since 1978, when the first Cape Argus was arranged by a group of 528 cyclists protesting at the lack of cycling infrastructure in Cape Town. Since then hundreds of thousands of cyclists, including the Tour de France greats Eddy Merckx, Miguel Indurain, and (pre-doping disgrace) Lance Armstrong, have taken part.

Our team is rather less stellar: myself, a keen if very amateur cyclist, two London office workers, a physiotherapist, a professor and our captain Allan Lamb – a man, by his own admission, more comfortable wielding a bat than pedalling up the side of Table Mountain. But we were doing this to raise money for a worthy cause - the Prostate Cancer Research Centre (see below).

Before the challenge of the race, however, there is the challenge of actually getting your bike over to South Africa. You need a bike box – which can be rented for around £40 from any number of online retailers rather than shelling out to buy one – and the tools to dismantle and reassemble your bike on the other side.

For the London leg all runs smoothly, but then at Johannesburg – regardless of which airline you are flying with – you have to collect the bike box, wheel it outside the airport, and recheck it into the Cape Argus race tent outside the terminal.

At this point my heart sank as I was forced to unpack my entire bike bag for “security reasons”. I was then told it wouldn’t be accompanying me on my connecting flight, which, incidentally, was taking off in 30 minutes. After struggling to force my wayward handlebars back into the bike box, I had to hand over a £17 handling fee. Yet despite my grumbles, my bike was actually there to greet me when I landed at Cape Town. Others in my team were not so lucky, their bikes turning up several days behind them.

As soon as you leave Cape Town’s gleaming airport, spruced up for the 2010 World Cup, it is clear that for this week, at least, the bike rules. Even three days before the race, cyclists zip along every road, weaving in between the city-centre traffic jams. For my first night I stay at Protea Hotel Breakwater Lodge, a redeveloped 19th-century prison just a two-minute pedal from the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, where my fellow guests seem almost entirely made up of cyclists.

The race begins with a sea of multi-coloured lycra

There are Australians (in garish yellow wallaby jerseys), French, English and South Africans, too. As I put my bike back together in the sun outside, I receive endless offers of help as I struggle to reattach the chain set.

Cape Town, like all South African cities, possesses that potent mix of developed and developing, throwing up uneasy juxtapositions. The gleaming waterfront, which buzzes with restaurants and bars, would not look out of place in any European capital, but still suffers from power cuts. Families sleep rough on the grass outside bike shops that display gleaming carbon machines.

The pleasure of travelling on two wheels is that you get to see all aspects of a city. Early every morning before the sun gets too hot, I ride along the Cape Peninsula, joining a stream of cyclists whizzing down the well-paved roads (avoiding the ubiquitous squashed rats). One morning, after a 6am phone call from a Mozambique-based Irish diplomat I have met, I find myself on a morning ride with the 1987 Tour de France winner, Stephen Roche.

For most of the trip I stay at the lovely Table Bay Hotel where returning to breakfast from a morning’s cycle is an utter joy. Its rooftop swimming pool never seems to be crowded, while the staff don’t bat an eyelid as you clatter across the lobby in your cycle shoes for afternoon tea in the hotel bar.

On the eve of the race we have an early night and agree to meet for a 5am breakfast. As we leave for the starting line the wind howls.

As in the London marathon, the professionals go first, followed by waves of amateurs of all ages. Some wear fancy dress, many more have cycling jerseys stretched over guts that are far from aerodynamic. The sheer size of the field and tricky conditions means there are multiple pile-ups. Organisers say 2014 was a good year with “only” 73 people taken to hospital and, out of these, 28 admitted. But the thrill, particularly with no back brake, is all part of the experience. It is wild, fast, beautiful, and simply the most fun one could dream of having on two wheels. Crowds line the route to roar you on all the way. No wonder the race – which is now limited to 42,500 entrants – sells out within five days of opening each year.

Slowly I gain ground on my team-mates, before, 20 miles to go, rejoining Lamb at the front of our group. Despite the wind, the African sun is fierce, and we jostle for position until the end. Our original aim was to complete the race in under four hours, but in the face of 50mph gusts we revise that to merely getting over the line at Cape Town Stadium. In the end we make it in four hours two minutes and share sweaty hugs, giddy with tiredness and joy at having finished.

They say that once you’ve cycled the Cape Argus, you get addicted. And true to form the field on the day was stuffed with riders who travel across the world to take part every year. Our team were about one third of the way through our victory beer when we resolved to do the same.

Protea Hotel Breakwater Lodge Smart double rooms from about £139 a night. There is a lovely restaurant frequented by students from the neighbouring university.

Table Bay Hotel (suninternational.com); rooms are huge and beautifully appointed with views over sea or mountain; doubles from £174 a night. The hotel serves early breakfast for cyclists taking part in the race.

For a cheaper alternative, try the Backpack hostel (backpackers.co.za) which has rooms from £28 a night and a friendly bar where you can sip locally brewed beer in the shadow of Table Mountain.